I move: "That the Bill be recommitted in its entirety to a committee of the House."
The Minister has introduced a major change to the Bill by way of amendment No. 58 and there is a complete absence of opportunity for the House to debate this section in any detail owing to the presence of a guillotine.
In the Bill as amended on Committee Stage, there is a section 141 which deals with the question of aiding and abetting tax evasion, as requested by the Chairman of the Revenue Commissioners on a number of occasions. The Minister's amendment, which we have only recently received, seeks to make the identification of aiding and abetting much more difficult. It will now have to involve somebody being reckless and culpability of a high degree. The bar has been set much higher regarding aiding and abetting than it was in the draft Bill.
Furthermore, in section 141(b), as amended in committee, there was a reference to somebody indirectly facilitating the fraudulent evasion of tax by any other person. I understood this, and so did other members of the Select Committee on Finance and the Public Service, as a particular attempt to capture, for example, officials or directors in banks or other institutions who were involved in establishing schemes to aid and abet tax evasion but who, as the Chairman of the Revenue Commissioners has pointed out, could not be successfully prosecuted. While on Committee Stage the Minister indicated he was considering the matter we received no notification until we received the amendment as the Minister has tabled it.
